D'you know, the beer thing might actually be looking in up in Eastbourne.
Granted, the starting place is pretty low but there are actual glimmers...
First, The Crown, our stalwart local that has a proper set of "regulars". I'm starting to feel like one of them - cheerily greeted and bade farewell by other regulars. A couple of the bar staff who have been around the pub as kids with their families (regulars, of course) and who started doing glass collecting at the weekends are now fully-fledged bar staff and we've seen them grow, and grow until now they're about 90-feet tall. Landlord, Andy, tells us cask sales have increased some and now he's turning around more interesting cask beers pretty quickly - recently we've blinked and missed a new one! When we tootled in on Monday afternoon there were two really nice ones on (Mallinsons Nectaron, Kent Prohibition) and that had followed NBB and Three Acres beers a few days before. This cheers us enormously!
Then, if that weren't good enough, John and Jamie of Beerarama have starting doing one 9 gallon cask each weekend with a chiller jacket and a cask-tipper at the back of the bar. Falling into the place after a stressful (but brilliant) work session with some volunteers, I asked for two-pints and John gave me a double-take. "You don't drink pints!" he chuckled. Frankly, it was just as well that we did because the bloody things didn't touch the sides...and lovely beer, too.
This week, I've seen on social media that a local micro-brewery (Route 21) and a local but well-known cider producer are planning to open a new taproom in town (not far from the Eagle, it happens) and that's definitely cause for celebration. Even if we don't end up going in there all the time (like Ninkasi because it's not always convenient, or whatever) then it's nice to know that we can ring the changes. Rest assured, we certainly will be.
Hopefully this will buoy up other similar places and maybe even convince others it worth opening.
